13 replies to this topic

[Xoanon]

Loyd Case from PCWorld attended the Nvidia Community Day and has this to say on the MechWarrior Tactics demo:

More years ago than I care to admit, I ran a Battletech miniatures campaign for five years. For the uninitiated, Battletech is a game of mech combat, with a deep rules set and set in a richly created universe loosely based on the fall of the Roman empire. A typical game might encapsulate a 12 vs. 12 mech skirmish and would take a good eight hours to play – not counting setup and tear down.

These days, I rarely have a full day to dedicate a full day to playing one miniatures game. So when I heard Roadhouse Interactive was developing a browser-based implementation of the old Battletech board game, I felt compelled to check it out.

Nvidia hosted a Mechwarrior Online tournament in Santa Clara on Friday, July 27th, which was fine – I played most of the Mechwarrior PC games and love stomping around in a giant battlemech shooting up other mechs. But Mechwarrior Online is more a sim – you’re the mech pilot. Mechwarrior Tactics is the top-town strategy game, where you play the mech commander.

During the Mechwarrior Online event I ran into James Romanchuk, producer for Mechwarrior Tactics, which was fully playable on four PCs in a small room off the main tournament hall. My friend Scott Crandall and I sat down for a session, but before diving in, James sat down and walked us through all the setup.

More http://www.pcworld.c...oking_good.html

Check out Skyeluna62's thread on the subject: http://mwtactics.com...ory-on-tactics/

[Battalia]

Please use the search bar next time to avoid multiple topics for the same thing. Thanks.

Just kidding, but for anyone that would like to take part or see what people think about the lovely tidbits found on this article please do not hesitate to work your way over to here!

Keep the news articles coming!

[Mater]

"a 12 vs. 12 mech skirmish and would take a good eight hours to play"


but that’s what some of us like/want ... i sat at a game for 6-10 hours when we play .. why not here (yes i like a fast match .. but what about the OLD TT gamers

[MHayden]

"a 12 vs. 12 mech skirmish and would take a good eight hours to play"


but that’s what some of us like/want ... i sat at a game for 6-10 hours when we play .. why not here (yes i like a fast match .. but what about the OLD TT gamers

I don't think the older BattleTech gamers are the target audience, which is both good (for everyone else) and bad (for old BT gamers). On the plus side, this game will have many more players on hand to fight against, instead of the limited pool of people in your area who play BT. Also, there is always MegaMek for those who really want to play the classic BT game on computer/online.

That said, it sounds like a lance is going to be the largest unit size in the game, which is a little disappointing.

[Hendell]

The questions in this news posting are being discussed on another thread but I would like to ask here if there is a way to assure us that the key feature of Battletech's system mechanics that is the 2d6 probability curve is being kept for MWT or at least the percentage values that come from the dice, and we are not switching to the wildly less effective simplification of the D20 system and it's 5% baseline increments as suggested by the 60% and 65% numbers shown on the hunchback's murdering of the spider?

[Battalia]

http://mwtactics.com...ask-a-dev-here/

A better place to ask a Dev a question is in the official "Ask a dev here" topic

[Hyoukage]

I don't think the older BattleTech gamers are the target audience, which is both good (for everyone else) and bad (for old BT gamers). On the plus side, this game will have many more players on hand to fight against, instead of the limited pool of people in your area who play BT. Also, there is always MegaMek for those who really want to play the classic BT game on computer/online.

That said, it sounds like a lance is going to be the largest unit size in the game, which is a little disappointing.

Honestly, I don't see the issue of only one lance... besides the fact it's only ONE lance... two lances would work, too.
I've played both sides of that particular coin, and know the ups and downs to both.

Running a mission with one lance allows for a degree of stealth... of course, this is stealth relative to just how big the mechs in said lance happen to be. Obviously, even with only one lance, if it consists entirely of heavy and assault mechs, you might as well strangle stealth and throw it out the window from the top floor of the Empire State Building. Overall, a single lance of light and medium mechs can (relatively speaking) remain hidden better than a single lance of heavy and assault mechs, or two lances of mediums and lights.

Running a mission with TWO lances offers a degree of increased tactical flexibility not seen (usually) in a single lance. This, of course means your capability in the realm of stealth, even when running nothing but light mechs, is going to be minimal at best. Unless you decide to scatter your mechs all across the battlefield in an effort to remain hidden. Mind you, running two lance of light and medium mechs is only recommended if one has access to off-map artillery, like Arrow IV missiles or Long Tom batteries, or access to orbital weapons, like Dropships and satellite weapons platforms.

Of course, the devs could decide to add support for an additional deployed lance per player at a later time.
If so, I would be one of those who'd go for it.

[Battalia]

Of course, the devs could decide to add support for an additional deployed lance per player at a later time.
If so, I would be one of those who'd go for it.

Keep in mind, the limit is only 1 lance PER GAME right now. That means if you have 8 mechs good to go, you can play 2 games at the same time! 12 mechs means 3! 23,424 mechs means 5,857 games! The only limiting factor is your own spare mechs.

[RonasAlabar]

I think we're having another case of It's-Not-There-At-Launch-So-We'll-Never-See-It-itis. Patience, young grasshoppers. Devs have already assured us poor people that they have big ambitions for this game; I doubt their intentions are to leave it forever lance-on-lance.

[Nugwan]

This article has made my day, and its only 9am! I am so looking forward to this!

[Graywolffe]

Great article...This is my most desired online game of the year (while not very excited about the MW Online side of things). Am I the only one? Perhaps it's just my inner strategist.

[Badgerbanger]

Great article...This is my most desired online game of the year (while not very excited about the MW Online side of things). Am I the only one? Perhaps it's just my inner strategist.

Yup...looking forward to this MUCH more than MWO...though I'll still be playing that too. It's just hard to make a FPS long term interesting if there's no strategy...that's why the only FPS that hooked me for the duration was Planetside.

[Darromear]

Cool article! I was even more excited to see the screenshots of the actual pre-battle interface (and the STACs)

[SargusBane]

So we will have multiple lances fighting? I would be awesome!